Well the latest study from Demographia (5th annual) has just ranked Vancouver #4 in the severely unaffordable housing markets. The study ranked metropolitan area in the UK, United States, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada.
It should be noted that the people over at Demographia are pro sprawl and will use this as a means to push forth their agenda. Come to think about it, it reminds me a lot about the Vancouver blog scene *ahem*.
Nonetheless, since Vancouver continues to sprawl outward and not develop upward I believe a discussion is warranted.
Us Vancouverites are well aware of this problem. I mean when houses in the valley (i.e. Surrey, Langley) start to approach a median price of half a million dollars you know something has got to give. The median house price in Vancouver is just shy of $500 million as of September 2008.
So why is EcoDensity a bad thing? Oh right the freakin’ NIMBY’s like to leave things the way they are. Egregious.
Our high rating was somewhat inflated as United States and UK began to experience sharp declines in traditionally unaffordable markets such as LA, Phoenix, Las Vegas amongst others. Vancouver and other Canadian housing markets did not start to see sharp declines until early summer of 2008. Although I’m sure we’d probably still rank somewhere in the top 10.
Three other British Columbian cities made the list. Victoria came in at #7, Kelowna was #19 and Abbotsford came in at #25. The “dream” is over fuckers, move to Thunder Bay.
VancityBuzz.com
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